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29 January 2014

Custom Empress Regent Tiara

Empress Regent Tiara with blue stones

I sort of like doing these posts where I show all the iterations I've made of a tiara. I made the bottom tiara first, as I had these beautiful crystal beads that I wanted to showcase. Someone visiting my shop saw that tiara, and wanted one in the same design but with different colored stones. So then I tried a slightly different design, since I did not have large red crystals.

I make a sort of bezel out of polymer clay, fit a flat glass marble into it, and then string some wire through and bake it in the oven like that. When it's done baking, I pop the marble out, file the clay as needed, then spray paint the whole bezel setting gold. The marble I take and paint whatever color is need onto the flat side. I paint a thick enough layer so that the color is really rich and vibrant. I then add the smallest amount of glue to the inside of the bezel, then pop the marble back in. I don't need much glue since the fit is so tight. I can then add these hand crafted gems to the tiara frame.

Something I didn't quite notice before is that I seem to be losing pearls in every successive design! The first tiara has three pearls with the crystal, the second one has two pearls next to the bezel, and then the third one has only one pearl. I wonder what happened...I mean, obviously I didn't have enough room to add any more pearls. What can I do? Also, the name changed for each tiara. Hmm...maybe I need to be more consistent?